Mitchell, Lucy M.: A history of ancient sculpture (New York, 1883)

146 EARLIEST ART ON GREEK SOIL.

There were also found very many objects of cruder material, fragments of
vases in clay, either unglazed and in dull colors, or having a brilliant finish.
They are painted with geometrical designs, in which straight and broken lines
and circles with tangents play a most prominent part: man, and the animals
necessary to him, such as horses and deer, likewise occur in crude and equally
geometrical shapes.'99 Much of this pottery is decorated with subjects taken
from sea-life, such as polyps, shells, nautilus, sepia, fish, and waves, as well as
long-necked water-birds. There is occasionally an intermixture of naturalistic
leaves, and the like; while now and then a motive has strayed among them
which must have come from the Orient, such as the close-beaked griffin, the
lotos-bud, and palm-leaf. The importance of these rude wares lies in the close
resemblance of their decoration to that of the gold and other wares found at
Mykene; indicating that all these objects belong to one common art-family,
which has only within the last ten years been revealed to us. Moreover, the
occurrence of nautical subjects on these oldest vases is of the greatest impor-
tance in locating their origin, which is thus traceable to a maritime people liv-
ing on many of the islands of the ^Egean, especially Thera, Melos, Rhodes,
and Crete, where such vases have been found, and whence they must have
been exported in great numbers to Mykene.200

Summoning up before us these varied and peculiar products of a most
remote antiquity, is there any thing which bids fair to give birth to that unique
art of later days called Greek, so essentially independent in its character of
foreign types ? or should we see in this perplexing group a conglomerate
of elements borrowed entirely from the older Orient ? In this bewildering
array of gold, silver, ivory, bronze, and gems from Mykene, other parts of
Greece, and the islands, Milchhofer has been able to trace several distinct
elements, and show, that while receiving from the Orient, and gold-lands of
Asia Minor, a most decided impulse, there was, nevertheless, on the islands a
peculiar artistic capacity, which, absorbing into itself foreign elements, was
able to combine and improve them, and thus produce an art different from
that of its older neighbors, and full of inner life, out of which should in
time to come be developed the creations of a perfect Greek art.201 Among
these islands, Rhodes, Melos, and Thera, no doubt, played a part; but Mil-
chdfer believes that Crete took the lead. Tradition makes this island the
home of Minos, the first Greek ruler, and of Daidalos, the first Greek artist;
and many myths, connected especially with Zeus, are traceable to this spot.
These shadowy data, however, for the early importance of Crete and its art,
still await confirmation by excavations.202

Among these monuments of earliest times, first and foremost is a large
class of engraved gems, humble, unpretending "island stones," as they are now
generally called, found in largest numbers on Crete. They are discovered also
on the other islands, and the mainland of Greece, especially in the Pelopon-